The White Rose
by Tare-Bear
Summary: "He liked to take from me, that's what my husband did." Coriolanus/OC. From beginning to end.
1. Chapter One

A/N: This is a Snow/OC story. I will keep is as accurate as I will. If this 'grosses' you out, because you despise Snow than I would like to remind you he was handsome once. He had to be. In a society revolving around beauty he had to be at least appealing, so don't argue with me on that point. As for another point, I will share also that there's no known fact if he had a family, but I say he does. He should. There's nothing to be said on his rise in power other than that he killed those running against him or those that threatened his power/popularity. I'm going to start it with him being the President's son, running against his father's unending disappointment, his older brother, and all those other politicians out there. (Note also that he didn't start drinking the poison until later.) Trust my pacing. Trust the story, and enjoy, please. Thank you. -Taryn(:

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Chapter One

The first time I met him I was only fourteen. My mother and I were on our way to her work, because she needed to pick up a handful of files she'd left behind at the Training Center. Of course, I was not happy about this. I was a very busy, self-centered fourteen year old who could not pause to consider taking one single breath and devoting it to someone as unimportant as my _mother, let alone anyone beside myself_.

_How lame, right?_– A more than accurate assumption of my thoughts that late evening.

She tried to hold my hand on the elevator ride up and I bitingly ripped it away, throwing a few snarls in there as well. Guilt ensued those things, blossoming like fireworks somewhere deep in my chest, underneath the pretty blue and bejeweled jacket I wore. The same one she'd bought me not a day beforehand. To hide from this particular feeling gnawing away on my insides, my eyes found the intricate gray swirls tattooed on the back of my hands more interesting.

Nothing really strikes out at me from my memory on this particular day much more than the feel of the coarse carpet underneath my feet. I can't remember what the weather was like, or what documents my mother forget. Nor could I tell you the date. Those sorts of things never mattered to me back then. Something I can tell you is that I started the day in heels; high, nine-inch heels of a sapphire resemblance. Not only was I incapable of walking in them, I persisted to run around the mall with my friends. As if keeping myself upright hadn't been hard enough before those shoes factored themselves into my life. But now I'm getting off subject. My feet, yes uncoordinated and incompetent, were also covered from heel to toe with festering, stinging blisters and in turn, in that moment of time that I unwillingly gave up to my mother, I rid myself of their pestering.

I waited outside the door of my mother's Head Gamemaker office, leaning into the wall, the harmful-yet-beautiful-shoes kicked aside. A grimace appeared on my face at the feel of the carpet between my toes.

You'd think a building as important as this would have nice carpets. Surely, the president could chip in. The guilt I felt for snapping at my mother on the way up, almost as quickly as it struck, was just as swiftly washed away and I opened my mouth to ask her precisely why the carpets were so awful. It didn't occur to me that the feelings of remorse vanished far too easily, but that was back then. Back before I learned how to be a proper human being.

"Mother, how old are these carpets? _More_than five years, do you think?"

My pinky toe, painted and decorated with a gem-encrusted toe ring, twisted into the industrial gray carpets. The color of pollution. I had a hard time finding something as equally unappealing as the carpets to compare it to, especially within the Capitol. So, almost like a reflex, my thoughts go to the place where the unappealing exists: the Hunger Games, the Districts, anywhere not here.

Gray. Like the storm clouds I once saw hanging over the reaping stage in District 3. Similar to the color of the ugly, tattered clothes tributes from District 12 had worn, because their fabrics are stained daily by coal dust. Gray, like the color of a little girl's face, as the blood drains from her gaping chest wound and she slips into death.

Ugly, was the word I concluded on. Which only made my desire to leave the Training Center ten times as intense. It would have been different if I knew tributes were somewhere in this building, preparing for their days in the arena. That would have made me excited and exhilarated at the chance of sneaking peeks at the infamous corpses-to-be. But unfortunately, for me or my mother I'm unsure, our trip to the Training Center was during a Victory Tour. The victor was due to be in District 2 that night, and on the morrow they would be in the Capitol, jumping back to District 1 to finish things off.

I remember all that and it makes me ashamed to say things like the day's date never occurred to me. I remember precisely everything about the Hunger Games that year and I remember what little money I put into it and of which tribute I watched die when my donation meant little.

"Oh not nearly so long, sweet," my mother called back to my question, (considerably late, I might add) and then said, with a sigh, "It'll take me a few more minutes. I need to enter some new things into the system. Don't wander about, you hear me?"

Do fourteen year olds ever do what they're told? No. Not even close. In fact, they particularly enjoy doing the _opposite_of another persons' request. Especially me, who had never known discipline. "Of course, mother."

To think my life could have been changed by this one moment is almost painful. Possibly, my mother could have listened for a moment longer to hear the all too sweet tinge of my tone. Or picked up on the sounds of my clumsy steps taken away from the doorway. If, perhaps, my feet weren't aching I wouldn't have opted to take the elevator and could have taken the stairs. Maybe even if there _was_a current Hunger Games in session I would have stayed put and, this by a contribution, would have changed my whole life. Saved me from a existence of strain and trouble.

Yet, all the hope and pain and desperation I put in that thought is full of vain.

The feel of the carpet continued to disgust me the more steps I took to the end of the hallway. When I stopped in front of the elevator, pressing the white-lit button, I noticed the edges of my nail polish were chipping. Upset, wanting to look closer, I shifted both heels I'd been carrying into my left hand and brought the finger in question up to eye level.

Nothing could have distracted me from the crises at hand. I mean, chipping nail polish had actually been all that mattered to me. Literally. Running frantically through my thoughts were ways to quick fix it until I could get in touch with my best friend or, if my free-time permitted, the local beauty shop. Phone numbers skimmed passed top of my thoughts, dovetailed by the walks I would need to take if I couldn't spend the last of my allowance on a cab ride.

And it only took one small, inconvenient gasp to drag me down twenty more levels of morality.

I didn't notice the elevator doors opening; he was just as shocked to see me as I was to see him. Clearly colored all over his face, deep in his wide, startled eyes, was a mixture of furiousness and a darker sort of fuming. Since I'd grown up watching the infamous Hunger Games, and loving them like any Capitol groomed child should, the sight of someone's pale, limp body slouched against the elevator wall next to his feet did not immediately make me flinch.

"What–"

Before the sentence left my mouth the boy lurched forward, his hand clapped over my face and he ripped me into the elevator. I was shoved to the ground, on top of the cooling corpse. I wanted to scream, of course, against the palm of his freezing, icy hands... yet, I didn't.

"Don't," he said. "If you wise up, now, I'll let you walk away from this alive."

That's when I first feared him. When his strength outweighed mine, when his sharp eyes bore with a fierce determination into my face, not an inch separating our noses. And he was serious. So serious. I was a girl who didn't know serious, who would laugh in the face of serious and preferred the comforts brought on by hair dye and jelly donuts. Now this boy held me against the floor of a moving elevator, my breath forced into my lungs, and a dead man, who I dimly recognized, underneath my back.

Too terrified to resist, too paralyzed by his eyes to speak, I only nodded.

"Good."

The boy released me, pulling me to my feet and steadying me. His calm, unshaken fingers smoothed out the edges of my skirt. When he looked back up at my unwavering stare, his too-full lips pulled into a smile. His face strikes up a memory. I _know_him. My hand jumped to my heart and I stumbled back into the closed doors of the elevator, grappling to wrap my head around his presence.

I'm not one to be claustrophobic, but in the tiny, metal box with a dead man and the face of the president's son grinning at me, there just didn't seem to be enough air around us. A stale, sickly smell came from the mouth of the man on the ground. Pricks of nausea pulled at my stomach, at the sight of vomit spilling from his mouth. It was new to me. Scary. While watching the Games I didn't have to deal with the smells and direct sights of the tributes' bodies; it struck me as odd that it was so unappealing to see.

"What happened to him?" I asked, waving a shaky hand toward the corpse.

For years to come I will always wonder what emotions contorted across Coriolanus Snow's face before answering me. I could have known, should have, but my mind had taken that precise moment to worry about my shoes that'd I dropped upon him pulling me into the elevator, instead of focusing on his eyes or the curve of his lips. The shoes were back on the same floor as my mother and I was quickly shooting downwards with the president's handsome, seventeen year old son.

And the dead man.

One more close look at the corpse confirmed I knew that man as well. Too boot, I knew them both from the same place: the television. The dead man was the president's closest work-related friend, Grantson Herk. A political god that was said to be running in the next election once the current president, recently taken ill, dies, and that would be Grantson's attempt to take over the government. _Not anymore, _I thought. He was stone-cold. Six feet under. A reeking smell of acidic zest wafting from his throat.

"I don't know. He collapsed a few minutes before your floor came up," Coriolanus said. There was a carefully indifferent, nearly arrogant tone to his voice. Yet it made me calm. It soothed me and the fear in me sunk away. I would accept his lies. He's the president's son, what could he harm? I've seen him for years growing up on television. Images of him were scattered throughout my mind; him smiling with missing teeth, just a babe, climbing up monkey bars, swinging on the swings with his little sisters, waving from the president's mansion's balcony during the Games. "I'm going to take him to the hospital floor, real quick, you don't mind the long ride down, do you?"

Anger and disobey the president's son? Oh, no. Not me. Not then.

"No," I whispered.

Coriolanus waved me over to stand comfortably at his side and my feet carried me there, albeit stiffly, but I made it there without show of gagging or shaking. I slouched into the wall, and he stared at me before frowning. He took my clammy hand into his. "I'm sorry that you had to see this," he said, his voice concerned. "No young lady such as yourself should ever be troubled with sights as this."

The elevator doors opened to the underground hospital floor that I've only known for victors, before I could reply to his statement. What would I have said? "Oh, no, young mister Snow, it is no trouble at all. I have no ails looking upon a dead man, I'm the Head Gamemaker's first daughter. Corpses do not frighten me," and then he should laugh at my morbid state, or perhaps the stupid way I ruthlessly accept death. He may even had thought me the kind who thirsted for blood. Worried about what this boy may think of me, I fidgeted with my silver rings as I stepped aside for young Coriolanus to heft the body into an upright position. Though it was far too late to save that poor man, Coriolanus approached the white floor folding out before us with determination. I was at loss for words or what to do, so I stood wild-eyed, staring after him, only to jump underneath my skin when he looked back over his shoulder.

He smiled widely, showing all his teeth like a dog when one growls. The black of his eyes stung like ice and his voice, firm as the crack of whip, was softened. "I'm terribly sorry for the way of our meeting, Miss...?"

"Miss Rose Marie Banks," I said, bowing my head in respect.

_Stupid, _I thought. Internally I cursed myself over and over. Why didn't I stop my mouth? Those words tumbled past my lips more as a result from an inbred instinct of being polite, rather than my willingness to flaunt at him my higher society status as a Head Gamemaker's daughter. Nor had it been the knowledge and mere hope that the president's son might be calling me by name that I permitted those words leave. Instead, the moment those words echoed outward, to be embedded into his memory, I felt my knee buckle with the weight of simply being _me_. As soon as the words left my mouth, I wished to take them back. My whole being withered under the silence that followed the statement and those crackling dark eyes of his stared into my soul. Like he knew me. Like I'll soon regret everything that ever was me.

_You should have lied, _I thought._I should have lied. Why didn't I lie?_

Now, he could find me.

And, after a couple of years, he did.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

I was dancing. A boy with sweet green eyes and brown hair, gelled in the usual style of slicking it back against his scalp, swung with me, arms draped around my waist and his sweet, spicy breath fanned across my painted face. I could feel everything. Heat from his palm against my back, seeping through the thin fabric of my dress, the tickle of the feathers in my false eyelashes brushing past the arch of my plucked eyebrows every time I blinked and, intensified by the alcohol I'd consumed for this years Hunger Games victor's party in the president's mansion, the occasional whisk of the metal bracelets around my wrist caused me to shudder.

I was eighteen, living the life of an out of control, rich kid. Daughter of the same Head Gamemaker who could get me into all the cool events; such as the annual victor parties. I came every year. I would dance, and drink, and eat, and vomit so that I could eat again, and flutter my eyes toward the most attractive males around.

I loved the parties. Those silly little events that waste both money and time and are so superfluous how could it not entertained me? The rush of the dancing sometimes left behind my stomach, or a kidney, maybe a lung or two as I tried to hold my breath once we paused between songs. I lost sense of everything, yet felt everything when I was at these events. Never my heart though, I never lost that. No matter how much liquor I drank or food I ate, I still clung to something in my chest. A piece of sanity. A fear in me that grew larger each passing day.

I dance and party and drink away my terror.

I dance with anyone, with everyone, with whoever is closest. I lose myself in the beat of the song, the swing of mine and their hips, and all my heart goes into the movement; but never loses it, no matter how hard I try to let go of it and its anxiety. Sometimes I prefer the bad dancers, old men who are beyond their years and who will buy me pretty rings and bracelets and dresses, or motherly women who the men have not the time for. They make it a challenge, distracted me further. I must move my feet quick enough, but with grace at the same time, so not to let them tromp on my toes. When I lead them it gives my arms a raw burning ache, like the burn of sweet liquor going down my throat. Savory, and all rewarding.

Not only does the dancing intrigue me, it is also the people... and the decorations that hang across the walls... and the flashing lights. Don't even get me started on the morsels of delicacy that surrounded the room. The best cooks are within the president's mansion. Of late, it was frequently whispered how little the president had need of those cooks for he was so ill that he hardly kept down his drinks let alone the sweet, buttered oysters they'd put out that night.

Only once did I skip out on this event that I so loved. The year I had, I had been fourteen and faked an illness just to avoid a certain someone who'd be there. He had to be attending, I supposed, considering it was in his home that the event arises, and I could not build the courage to come and face him. That was when the fear started. I tried to convince myself that he wouldn't remember. With everything else on his mind? The sickly father in his bed for days on in. The recent loss of his older brother, Alexander, whose funeral I'd not been important enough to attend.

I remember the day we met, only that once, so vividly. I told myself that neither of us did anything wrong. Yet, no matter how much I whispered it into my pillow at night, a news report the following day countered that, telling everyone that the same political god I'd seen on the floor of the elevator was found dead in his bed the next night. It was proclaimed a mysterious cause.

So young... and so scared, I lied to myself. Coriolanus moved the man to lay more comfortably in his own bed. He had to have done that for him. That poor man, Coriolanus must have been so in shock and so raked with pity... grief for the close companion of his father must have driven him to forgot that he must come out with the details and explain everything to the news reporters, and others alike.

The sad thing is, I was able to convince myself of this so easily that the next year I did come, knowing he'd be there. Fortunately for my nerves it had gone beautifully. The room was so large, so full of people and loud noises and excitement for our visiting victor that I had not even caught a glimpse of the young Mr. Snow among the crowd.

The year of my eighteenth birthday however, I was not so fortunate. I thought myself safe in this stranger's strong hands, as he twirled me, but I stumbled. Stumbled right into the hands of the devil. And he clutched me close, before I could even catch my breath, let alone a piece of my bearings.

"Well hello, Miss Banks," he said, seemingly surprised to have run into me. Those eyes stared into mine, so laughably, so kind... I would have been fooled. Could have been, if I didn't immediately think of the suffocating elevator we'd once been in four years ago. "It's been some time, no?"

I struggled to stand straight in the crowd of swaying dancers. My previous partner stood behind me and he looked cautiously at the president's son. "Is she your date?" the boy asked, taking a step aside, bowing his head in respect to our television prone mini-politician. Over the years I'd come to avoid televisions because of that, and it seemed like decades since I'd actually looked into the devious face of Coriolanus Snow.

I watched him give my dance partner the faintest of smiles, a curt nod, and his eyes hardened.

"I-I had no idea, my apologies." And then the green-eyed boy bailed on me, disappearing into the throngs of people faster than a tribute pursued by Careers.

I was not even truly _his _yet, but still, it was so easy for him to convince people that I was at the end of this man's leash already. Owned, like a dog. No, that is too much of a companion. Rather, I was his cow, where he would milk my strength for his use and cage me like livestock waiting for death. Somewhere, a place I was unaware of, he had branded in my skin a seal that is all his. Burned there by those eyes that refused to let me move or breathe or think.

I felt like the fourteen-year-old girl again, stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. The taste of fear, almost forgotten to me, returned to my mouth. Metallic and thick, penny and nickle stew. "Not long enough," I breathed and his arm around my waist tightened painfully.

"I must admit, I missed your face." I did not even _like _that lie. I did not want him to want me. "Your flesh... it appeals to me." His lips traced along the edge of my jaw and I could taste the once sweet, sugary alcohol in his mouth turn bitter and revolting as he breathed my own air. I would have shoved him away, I would have torn myself from his arms as well, if not for the fear that trapped my intoxicated mind in place. It rendered my legs stiff with terror.

I wanted to call him on his bluff, nonetheless.

"Not nearly as appealing as your betrothed's," I said. I thought maybe if I could avert his attention, like any other boy's attention could be turned, I could escape him. Maybe the knowledge that his future wife was somewhere in the crowd would be enough. "Where is she, tonight, Coriolanus?"

He hummed under his breath, seemingly amused by my fight or attempted barb, and he swings me around slowly, easily picking up the tune of the song. With my body now swaying too close to his own as he led me through the dancers, I turned my eyes from his, searching the crowd for a savior.

"We're not betrothed," he whispered into the shell of my ear. His fingers brushed along the back of my neck, raising gooseflesh down my arms. "It's merely the choice of wife my overbearing father has decided upon."

'Overbearing' had not been a word I'd ever heard related to our sickly president. "Don't you want to make him happy?" I asked, wondering what son he was to disobey.

He gave a sharp bark of laughter and then, quietly, menacingly, "When I could chose you instead?"

Withering on the inside, my cheeks searing red, I tried not to let my voice squeak. No word or sight of him in four years, except for the Hunger Games showings on television, as rare as they were, and he jumped out with _this_. "Me?"

Coriolanus pulled away to look me in the eyes. All the laughter in there had faded, all falseness once there drained from his face, leaving only a dire seriousness. And I hated serious. Serious frightened me more than secrets. "You already proved yourself trustworthy and that _little girl _my good-for-nothing father has set up for me, does not even begin to show your promise." His lips twitched into a small smile. "You didn't scream once. In fact, you helped me. And," his hands glided delicately down the length of my back and I shivered, "you're conveniently socially acceptable, in both status and looks, for me to take as wife. No one will suspect my reasons beyond that I was simply minding my own business at the usual party when, out of nowhere, I'm stricken by your presences."

"You don't know me," I gasped out before I could hold it back

I tried to twist away from his caressing hands.

"Oh, but I do." Coriolanus gave me an almost boyish smile, sheepishness in his eyes. "I've kept a close eye on you, Rose. You're much more than the typical Capitol dame. You're truly a delicacy I must have. I can trust you, and you're just what I look for in...well fairly everything. You're perfect."

"No," I objected, unaware that I'd insulted not only myself but him as well, by denying a compliment. My fear ruled me and my actions. A blur of desperation and a feeling of being trapped made me breathless. This man had practically proposed to me, admitted to stalking me and I clung to a defense of insulting and degrading myself. "I'm not even close to perfect. I don't act proper, and I'm selfish, and I get my hair done far too often. I've been so drunk before that I've embarrassed not only myself but everyone within the room. My mother, you wouldn't want to be related to her. She's a sharp tongued woman that insults every single one of your politician's. Your father, and your _mother _even, quite often. She loves only her job, and I fear..well I could be just like her, you know, I could grow old and be Head Gamemaker and bitterly hateful of everything about you and your lot..." I trailed off when I realized the words that had managed to escape.

"Are you done?" Coriolanus asked me, raising a finely manicured eyebrow.

I flushed.

He smiled again. "You act as proper as I want my woman. I can't stand a prudish woman that shall bark at my heels and tug at my clothes like a bear, nor do I need a soft spoken, timid mousy girl-child following at my back. You are neither, but as for selfish? You?" And he laughed in my face, tossing his chin up in vain arrogance. "I have seen no one more honest. When have you ever lied? When have _you _stolen money from your mother's purse or cheated out your friends? None, that's what. I know a lot more than you think I do. I know exactly what your mother thinks of my family and my father, but he's too... ill to even consider the problems within the Games. Not even your face, let alone personality reflects your mother's quality." He ran his fingers through my thick, curly mane of black, framing my pale heart-shaped face with all the delicacy in the world. So gentle, I shuddered at the approval somewhere deep in his black eyes. "If not for your eyes, I wouldn't even believe the two of you related," Coriolanus finished saying. "Even still, the darkness of your blue is softer, hidden behind a wall of mist. You have the dark hair and pale skin of a Snow. I fear you're as perfect as the white rose itself, Miss Banks."

"As white as the snow on the ground come the first of winter," I answered back, my eyes widening with realization. That was the phrase of his family. The Snow's family logo. A family of people who had the cunning to withstand the hard times, such as winter, and was looked up to for that. Yet, more so, they are the purity that the country so long ago craved after the Dark Days. At least, that was there campaigning strategy at that time.

"Exactly," Coriolanus said. His smile was so triumph, and doubtlessly, I knew why. He thought he'd found his match. Back then I considered him a boy wanting a girl who'd make his family proud, but I was wrong. This had nothing to do with family, but more to do with his severe need for perfection and power and reputation (albeit, his false reputation, but reputation nonetheless).

He wanted me. And he got me.


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The wedding hall was huge, fully eighty feet end to end and twenty broad. A wedding that should have brought me to tears, really, at the extravagance – which had been exactly what half of my close friends did upon seeing it, and hated me for it. _Why her? _I heard them whispering behind their hands. _What's so special about Rose? _I desperately wished to tell them "_Nothing." _Instead, I was forced by not only my terror, but my fiance to smile and nod. Words, I quickly learned, were not something he appreciated for me to share.

Because I hadn't found it in myself to disobey Coriolanus, only a girl just turned eighteen, forced into an engagement with the president's son some three months ago, I spoke none during our matrimony and focused on the wedding decor that should have melted my heart. Much of the hall was painted blue and gold in interweaving designs; the heights were hung with almost one hundred different chandeliers and streamers, and various kinds of glimmering, jeweled nets that I had no name for.

The hall itself was full of strangers, heat, and raucous, good-humored noise. Men and women, mentors and victors, commoners, my family, the president's close political competitors, and friends sat at the trestle tables, which ran the length of the hall, while Avoxes, children, and dogs scampered about, either serving wine, cider, or ale, or nosing out the scraps of meat that had fallen to the floor. The wedding feast had been in progress some three hours. _Almost long enough to rival a victor's Victory Tour feast_, I thought, with little satisfaction.

At the head of the hall stood a dais. Before the dais, a juggler sat on a three-legged stool, so drunk, his occasional attempts to tumble his woolen balls and his sharp-edged knives achieved little else save to further bloody his fingers. A group of musicians with violins and flutes—still sober, although they desperately wished otherwise, I saw underneath my keen observation—stood just to one side of the dais, their music lost within the shouting and singing of the revelers, the thumping of tables by those demanding their wine cups be refilled without delay, and the shrieks and barks of children and dogs writhing hither and thither under the tables and between the legs of the feasters.

All of it seemed to mock me. The pure liveliness of the day, the people's joy at the union, the remembrance of the actual ceremony still freshly stinging in the back of my mind. At that point my vows still felt like bile in the back of my throat. _To love him forever, until the day I die... _but I didn't love him, I had thought stubbornly as he leaned in to kiss me. Coriolanus knew it, I knew it – _why did I have to pretend otherwise?_

In contrast to the wild enthusiasm of the hundreds of guests within the body of the hall that depressed and angered me so much, most of the fifteen or so people who sat at the table on the dais with me were noticeably restrained.

At the far end of the table sat the president, Mr. Snow. I remember meeting him for the first time and hearing his vehement disapproval of me. Too short. Not rich enough. _Alexander_ deserves better. Of course, afterward, Coriolanus had to explain to his father in a restrained, falsely patient voice, I'm to marry his youngest son; not the favorite eldest son, Alexander Snow, but merely Coriolanus. The president didn't object then. In fact, he seemed to care little of Coriolanus, though I suppose a twenty year old had to step out of his father's wing at some point.

I just didn't understand why his father loathed him so much that he could not manage to give one fuck.

I quickly learned that Coriolanus lived to spite his father. My marriage had more to do with Coriolanus' need for perfection and the fact that I already knew his biggest secret, than love. There was no affection between us. No warmth. Only friction. Fear and distant tolerance. A cold, formal relationship, almost identical to the beauty of a diamond; it's pretty to the outsider, looking at it, but really it's so impartial, so heartless, formal, chilly. Yet, unbreakable, too. Strong and well formed, which our relationship was not.

For the first three hours of the feast I had found myself uninterested in everyone. I wanted to shut myself away from the world and throw a pity party. I had been for months. Ever since I got engaged to Coriolanus the fear in my heart had finally been fulfilled, my life seemed dull and uprooted. But, and haltingly so, upon the forth hour of my wedding reception, a new guest arrived, late to the wedding and I lifted my chin to observe him as he clambered into a seat at the dais, completely uninvited.

No one said anything to him, however, about his rudeness. Almost everyone turned their eyes or nodded their head in his direction with dull appreciation or irritation, though. The man noticed none of it. He took his seat at the center of the table and reached for the nearest wine cup, but didn't drink it.

He was a man of some forty or forty-one years, although his short, almost white-blond hair, his graying beard-shadow, his squinted, ascetic eyes and the almost perpetually down-turned corners of his tight mouth made him appear much older. Once, he might have been a handsome youth, but not now.

As a girl, I was obsessed with fashion. Before I was roped into Coriolanus' life, I had taken joy in finding out what I'd wear day after day; but once I was taken in by him, I had lost the want to do it to give into my fear. I was worried if I spoke too loudly or I reached too far out for something, Coriolanus might find I was not the wife he wanted, rather he would prefer me dead. Despite my lack of shown interest, being naïve as I was at eighteen, the one thing I noticed most about this abominably rude stranger was the exact article of clothing he wore; a long, richly textured, heavy linen suit, embroidered about its neck, sleeves and hem with silken threads.

I watched his right hand, idly toying with his wine glass, and it was noticeably broad and strong, the hand of a swordsman, although his begemmed fingers were soft and pale; it had been many years since that hand had held anything but a pen or a wine glass. Even though I had been the daughter of the Head Gamemaker for eighteen years, and I had met many victors in my lifetime, I never actually thought I'd get to meet _The Victor _in all of my life.

But I suppose that was just what being a wife to a politician earned me.

The Victor's name evaded my thoughts. I could not remember it. But his eyes were of the palest blue, flinty enough to make any miscreant appearing before him blurt out a confession without thought, cold enough to make any woman think twice before attempting to use the arts of pleasure upon him.

At that time, those same eyes flitted about the wedding hall, marking every crude remark, every groping hand, every mouth stained red with wine. And with every movement of his eyes, every sin noted, his mouth crimped just that little bit more until it appeared that he had eaten something so foul his body would insist on spewing it forth at any moment. Was it my imagination, or did he too seem to loathe them all as much as me? Did he despise their happiness because his was shattered the day he was reaped into the First Hunger Games, and then rose out of it as the first victor and mentor?

I was enthralled; my disgust forgotten, the possibly fake tears of joy long passed my care.

_He came to my wedding, _I kept thinking, _why? Why would he come to a wedding if he hated people and liveliness so much? _I couldn't help but gather an inclining of apprehension. I drew the conclusion of his presence there as bad after watching him not eat or drink, for more than thirty minutes. He came because it intrigued him, because this wedding promised something new, something.. not right.

At my side was my composed, but rightfully cheerful husband. For the entire tumultuous celebration, he sat on my right, and after the first elicited interest in the victor faded, my eyes remained downcast to the hands folded demurely in my lap, the food sitting largely untouched on the platter before me.

I felt sick, knowing what would come afterward our wedding feast.

Honestly, I wasn't an ugly girl, my attractiveness resting more in my extraordinary stillness than in any extravagant feature. I wasn't worried about failing on the part of a woman, like most would, or about the tedious pain virgins generally receive (since I was in no state of purity), but I simply couldn't – wouldn't – sleep with Coriolanus Snow.

Per tradition, my hair, was tightly braided and tucked under a silken ivory veil (which itself was held in place by a golden circlet of some weight, my excuse for why I could not hold my face any higher than forty degrees), and I was dressed almost as richly as my new husband: a heavily embroidered blue scarf draped across my shoulders, over a long, crisp, snowy linen dress embroidered with silver threads about its hem and the cuffs of its slim-fitted sleeves. Unlike my husband, and The Victor, I wore little in the way of jeweled adornments, save for the gold circlet of rank on my brow and a sparkling emerald ring on the heart finger of my left hand.

That struck me as odd when I was young; to be caught without lavish adorned my limbs. I felt plain that day, no matter how hard I looked at the extraordinary factors of my wedding. I felt numb and terrified, and when Coriolanus reached for my hand underneath the feast table, brought it to his lips, and kissed the ring there my heart clenched in hatred.

I had thought then that no man would ever sicken me greater than this snake. This man who forced me to marry him, who sealed my lips against a murder I watched him commit when I was fourteen... to know that he held my mother within his grasp and used that as a threat over my head whenever it pleased him...

Oh, the odds, I hated him.

But I had quickly met his family and hated his sisters more.

Dorianna, known for her beautiful pale features and as the eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Snow, sat almost as still as myself, but with her head held high on her lovely neck, her almond-shaped black eyes watching both her brother and myself with much private amusement. I did not know if she knew what had happened between us. Could not understand that look in her eyes, nor the brief words she had spared to me once she met me formally at the engagement party.

All I knew was that Coriolanus and her had a grudge against each other. She hated me on principle.

The younger sister, Larentia (but commonly known as Lara, and adored among the commoners), sat closer to her father. The president wheezed at his daughter when she would exchange a quick, sweet amount of words, but did little else. _There is not much life in him, _I thought that day, _he is a worn and stooped man with thin black hair and much duller blue eyes to match Lara's. _Some used to say all the energy went out of him when his wife died in childbirth to her youngest, Coriolanus, and the rest say he crumbled completely the day his eldest son passed.

I had heard that Coriolanus' older brother was much more jubilant than the rest of the family. Loved by the commoners even more so than falsely sweet Lara, the beautiful, stunning Dorianna, and charming Coriolanus, but begrudged among his siblings, quite often, if I listened to gossip correctly.

"Coriolanus," I said, curiosity too much for me. "What happened to your brother?"

I watched his face closely. I had learned. I knew I had to watch to see if I'd be punished for my words and he did the same in return. I wondered what he found in mine. "He died. There was a sudden fever caused by a stomach infection. All of it was very sad." There was a glint in the back of his eyes. "And painful."

I swallowed, sickened by that glint, and turned my face back to my lap. "I wish you weren't so awful."

"And I wish you would smile, wife."

The loving tone of his voice made me look back up at him, to examine his expression and notice the challenge in his boyish, twenty year old face and voice. "But, _husband_," I said, low, "I am saving the smiles for your campaigning."

"Ah," he said and smiled, sincerely that time. "But, sweet wife, surely you realize there won't be one. I do not plan on having very many competitors come my time."

"No, I suppose you don't." No one around us could have heard our mutterings. It was too loud. "Is that why you leave your father in a half-way world of death and life? What is it that you feed him, my sweet, sweet husband? Might I try a drop, I could do with something to bleach my mind for tonight's agenda."

My words had not shocked only him, but myself as well.

I had never been cruel before. Maybe pleading, maybe sharp or sarcastic, or resisting of any intimate touches, but never had I openly spat on him. I blamed the wine, or the wedding cheer that I'd grown to hate _so _much my head ached with my dislike. "Forget it," I said, hastily. He had yet to react or reply and I couldn't find it in myself to lift my eyes from my lap. "Forget me..."

_...like you failed to so many years ago..._

…"You are not excited for tonight, my rose?"

_His rose, _I thought, my eyes closing momentarily, _always his. _"No. I do not seem excited, do I? Forgive me if I played you false."

I waited for his response; a snarky or charming reply? A chirpy one? A laugh, possibly? I didn't expect the stroke of his hand against my lower back, and I flinched unintentionally. When I opened my eyes, I had only one glance as Coriolanus' face before I noticed the pair of flinty blue eyes also trained on me.

The Victor smiled thinly back at my terrified, wide-eyed stare. To my knowledge he had not acknowledged me until that moment of the night, not even when I was the girl all in white underneath an alter, but that moment, was the first time I looked him in the eyes... and certainly not the last.

"Ignore him," Coriolanus whispered in my ear. I shuddered at the feel of his breath on me, and his hand still stroking slowly up and down my back. I tore my eyes away from the Victor and dropped them to the table.

"What's his name? I forget."

"His name's Grier. From District Ten."

"Ten?" I asked. "But the tributes from District One and Two are the best."

"They are," Coriolanus allowed. "But for the First Hunger Games? They were no different from the rest of the sniveling children."

"Then what made Grier different?" I felt sure he knew we were talking of him. I could not look his way even if Coriolanus demanded it of me.

"District Ten is livestock," Coriolanus said, as if that was obvious. "He was used to slaughtering pigs and cows and beasts. Children where just another thing to cut up. After that year, with his obvious skill wielding a knife, there were a few law changes in District Eleven, but nothing that should concern you, wife."

I decided it best not to push on the matter.

For the rest of the feast my eyes were on my lap.

Eventually came that moment when everyone decided that the wedding was not enough, and the bedding must now be accomplished. At Coriolanus' signal (shout, rather), Dorianna rose from her seat and, together with Lara and several other ladies, they took me and led me toward the stairs at the rear of the hall, which led to the bedchambers above. The largest and best of the bedchambers had been prepared for the only legitimate son of the President of Panem and his new bride, and once Dorianna had me inside, she and the other ladies began to strip me of my finery.

The tradition was a stale one. To strengthen the courage of the bride, and to warm the affections between sisters and sister-and-laws. But there were no words spoken, and Dorianna's eyes, when they occasionally met mine, were harsh and cold. Lara smiled shyly, but remained silent.

When I at last stood naked, Dorianna stepped back a pace and regarded my flesh. I felt tiny and numb to it all. _Have I wronged her? _I wondered. _Was she disappointed in her brother's choice of breeding use and political gold? _I admit my hips were still narrow, buttocks scrawny, and chest sparse of true weightiness. My waist remained that of a girl's compared to her: too straight and without very much of that sweet narrowing that might lead a man's hands toward those delights both above and below it.

Dorianna ran her eyes down my body, then looked me in the eye. I could not help but lift my hands to my breasts, as I watched Lara and the other ladies do the same. It was worse than Coriolanus' regard for me.

"You have not much to tempt a husband's embrace," Dorianna said. She moved slightly, sensuously, her breasts and hips and belly straining against her dress, and then smiled coldly. "I cannot imagine how any husband could want to part your legs, my new sister. But I cannot truly say I sorrow for the lack of children you shall breed..."

At that I blinked, flushing in humiliation. _The same, her and Coriolanus are. Fighting vigorously for the position of power. _I knew that if I had children and Coriolanus had actually gained presidency, than any kids of ours would be considered higher of liking than the older sister.

Lara sighed extravagantly, and the other ladies present smiled, preferring to ally with those two rather than me, this girl who, even then, wedded to the charming Coriolanus, promised less prospect of benefaction than did the powerful Dorianna.

"I don't know what I did to you..." I had begun to say, determined to find out what I did, but again the ladies giggled. I cut off, knocked breathless by the look of cold contempt in Dorianna's eyes. Before I could start again there came the sound of footsteps approaching the stairs, and the rumble of men's laughter.

"In the bed, I suppose," said Lara. With that, the women bustled me to the bed, drew back the coverlets over the rich, snowy whiteness of the bridal linens, and bade me to slide in.

As Dorianna and her ladies slipped out the door, the sound of encouragements and true companionship sounded from below and I caught the smile Dorianna gifted Coriolanus as he stumbled passed them into the room. I felt my heart race as he closed the door behind them, leaving us completely alone; me, naked within the covers, him, thankfully still clothed. But that was soon changed as he stripped himself of his finery and everything but the golden band around his own heart finger where I had shoved it some time earlier that day.

"You look like a frightened tribute," Coriolanus said. He stood naked beside the bed, observing me intently. There was something off in his voice that I'd never heard before. "You look like you..." he said, but stopped.

He slipped into the bed without a word further.

I laid with eyes screwed shut, waiting, stiff. The room was silent, cold, and devoid of color, the darkness behind my eyelids swimming. I waited for him to do something, to touch me, say something... laugh, even, but nothing came.

Still, nothing.

And I couldn't breathe with the apprehension building inside of me, so finally, summoning every piece of courage I could, I turned to my husband. He stared back at me with ominous, hungry, liquid black eyes.

One of his chilled hands brushed my shoulder. I flinched. Coriolanus frowned deeply and snatched it away. "I find you most displeasing," he said, then slid down the bed, rolled over so that his back faced me, and stayed like that the entire night.

A few hours later, when I thought he was long lost in the world of dream, I wept the tears that should have been shed for love of the wedding day that had just passed, but they came bitter and aching. _Why did I ever tell him my damned name? _I kept thinking. _Why was I so stupid?_

_Why was he so awful? _and I went to sleep, wondering just that.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

In the six months following my marriage to Coriolanus, the Capitol grew apace. Mr. Snow had announced plans to build a great arena for the coming up twenty-fifth Hunger Games. It would the world's first Quarter Quell and he wanted to be remembered for it; in four years time the Quarter Quell would be upon us and, inwardly, no one thought for a moment the president would live that long to see it. Building the extraordinary arena was the only way he was sure he'd be remembered for.

On top of that Mr. Snow decided to extend and refurbish his own mansion. I was forced from my mother's house into Coriolanus' chambers about his father's mansion. It wasn't unpleasant, but builders and laborers thronged the site. To cater to the growing workforce, as also the growing complexity of the mansion's occupants (Coriolanus' sisters and their families remained at home as well), so also the numbers of servants and Avoxes grew. Not to mention the countless doctors that rolled through in order to examine the president's condition.

The mansion almost tripled its population and in response a small irritation grew about the halls and chambers. Meals were especially difficult to get through, being that I hated most everyone. More oft than not I declined the invitation to a meal and sulked in my room, ordering an Avox to find me some food.

Aside the heavy knowledge which I held, that Coriolanus had paid off Avoxes and servants to watch me everywhere I went and note every tiny thing I did, or said, for what is was worth, I had managed to befriend one of the servants.

Some three months after my marriage, a young widowed woman had come to the mansion, highly recommended, asking for work as a laundress, or perhaps a maid... whatever work there was, she begged. It was odd that she would be hired, since Avoxes generally were more of the political family's taste, but it was to me the final decision went for allowing her a place among Coriolanus and I's household.

Damson, she called herself, after a variety of exotic plum. _A damson_, I thought, studying her silently for the first time, _was the last thing she looked like_. The woman was already tired and worn, despite her relative youth, with stooped shoulders, waxen cheeks marred by broken veins, and pale blue eyes that looked about to fade away to nothing. Nevertheless, she claimed to be a skilled laundress, and with Coriolanus as he employer, she better hope she did the work that was required of her and did it well.

With all the persons within the mansion, well, another laundress was always needed.

It was my job to hire our staff, as Coriolanus claimed he had no time for frivolous homey devices. I smiled at Damson. "Very well, then," I said, "but you'll have to work under my direct orders for the time being, until I can be sure you're trustworthy."

Damson's eyes brightened at the prospect of a home and I instantly softened. I patted her on her cheek and sent her away to join the other household staff. Within a week I had forgotten to distrust her, and most nights it was her who brought me food and sat with me, smiling at each other over the most atrocious, pointless gossip she'd heard while collecting clothes about the mansion.

"Lara said what?" I asked, fighting hard not to laugh.

Damson shrugged her gnarled shoulders and showed the smallest bit of a grin. "Well her and Coriolanus were having a go at it. He was telling her that she had to stop hiring the victor, you know, Marcus from District Two–"

"The prostitute?" I exclaimed, eyes wide.

"The very same."

"Oh, what about the man her father set her up with!" I shook my hand in a vague, forgetful gesture. "What was his name? Igneous?"

"Not even close. Neo, was the fella's name."

I rolled my eyes at her. "Like I get out enough _to_ be close. Tell me more, I'm intrigued. Tell me she made my husband scowl. Did his lips twist like they do when he's eaten something unpleasant?" I picked up my glass of wine and brought it to my lips, drawing the pungent fluid across my tongue. My smile was sore and ripe when I set the glass back to the table. "Did he shout at her? Lara does love to stamp her feet. What I wouldn't give to see Coriolanus tasting his own medicine!"

There was a pause after my exclamation and I realized that was the first time I'd spoken my dismay toward my husband. I could tell by the slight shift of Damson's face; she was about to look displeased.

Actually, for a minute, she seemed bemused, but when I opened my mouth, horrified, she only laughed.

"Oh, Rose," she said. "What a sad woman you are. I had wondered why you were locked up in here, this dark, plain room, all day, week upon week. I had wondered how such a lovely woman was captured in love by the president's son." Her blue eyes were intent on my pale face. "Coriolanus is a loathsome man, isn't he?"

All the cheer, all the laughter, had been drawn from the room. I could only feel the coldness, the bareness of this bedroom I normally shared with my silent and placate husband. Six months I lived with the man, and it seemed I had not talked to him since our wedding night, when he'd turned his back to me.

With a swift hand I threw all my utensils and unfinished food onto my plate and then I shoved it at the woman across from me. My eyes were trained on the gray swirling tattoos that spread down my arms onto the backs of my hands. "I adore my husband. He's charming, handsome, and intelligent." I glanced up at Damson. "I'm finished, clean up the mess and don't come back until the morning. I'll have laundry for you by then."

She came in the morning and the next, and the next, and by the fifth, after I cooled myself and coached myself in a carefully practiced passionless voice, we began to speak again. We grew friendly. I had a companion again, but she was one that I tiptoed around. She never mentioned my husband and I never let her bring him up. I knew that any servant could be paid by the press for a good story. And this delicious piece of scandal? A wife who secretly hated her husband and was forced to marry him? That would ruin Coriolanus and then he would ruin _me_.

Out of my boredom and entrapment, I had spent most of my time wandering parts of the mansion, even the ones in the works. I smiled at all the laborers and they never failed to return it; unlike so many members of the Snow family, whose lips seemed set in ice, unmoving and rigid. I found a particularly handsome worker that showed me more attention than anyone else previously living in the mansion. I adored him instantly. My husband might only briefly glance at me, but this man's amber eyes traced over me in the way that made me feel exhilarated.

"What is your name?" I asked him one day, feeling bold.

"Ephesus," he told me, tanned face twitching into a smirk. "But call me Ean."

"Call me Rose."

"Not Mrs. Snow?"

I had left after that, feeling bitter about the reminder. But everyday I would show up, peeking around marble columns or leaning over stray piles of lumber. Ean would smile warmly and flash those eyes and my heart would clench, in a loneliness that I'd not known as a child or girl. He addressed me as Rosey. A _ridiculous_ name, on all accounts, even to me, but I only smiled shyly and decided that I could endure an awful nickname for the sake of feeling.. _feeling_ _wanted_.

* * *

It was the eve of a late night in winter, when I approached him fully, not peering around a corner or something barring between us. I was dressed in a frock of blue and white silk, slashed and heavy on my form, hugging hips and arms. Later, months in the future, I would realize what I had been thinking when I approached him in that way, that it was not for Ean at all. Really, it was me, secretly keening for the attention my husband refused me.

Ean was sanding a length of wood. He lifted his head at the sound of my footsteps slipping over smooth floors and grinned at the sight of me there. I glanced about us, and the only person close to us was his partner at work, an old man. No one. A friend to Ean, who I had no care to heed. "I have needs of your strength. There is a heavy possession of mine I dropped and I can not lift it myself," I said to Ean, who rose to his feet at my words.

I turned and made off down the hall; I could hear him following.

Around the next bend, through three doors, behind a rich traverse of maroon, he caught up to me. In the dim hallway, I leaned up on my toes and brought my lips to Ean's ear. "To you, I'm not married."

I had meant to withdraw then, but his hand shot out and caught my wrist. He tugged me into him, the hard outlines of his chest muscles searing through my clothes. I felt wanting seethe its way up my body; how long had it been since I'd kissed someone? When was the last time someone hugged me? I was craving human contact so much that I melted into his lips damp against my ear.

"Ten twenty," he whispered, before he pulled away, smiling brightly.

"Ten twenty?" I said, confused. I blinked at his handsome face for a few seconds before it dawned on me. "You're a prostitute." My heart sank. I was only another potential costumer to him. Nothing special.

Ean roared with laughter. "No." I relaxed some, relieved, momentarily. "I'm a porn star."

"What is a porn star doing lifting boards and painting walls?" I inquired suspiciously.

Ean touched my cheek and drew the thumb along the jawbone. I shuddered underneath his hand. Odds, I was leaning into him. I should be disgusted. I should recoil and shove him away and be a proper Snow. Remembering the weight of the name I bore, I shook myself, stood straight and managed to pull his hand from my face.

He merely caught my hand, intertwined our fingers, and brought my knuckles to his lips. His eyes were hot into mine, like two gold coins, gleaming, and I pushed my hand more firmly into his mouth. "Ten twenty, Rose," he murmured. "Meet me twenty minutes after ten tonight through the servants chamber, on the bottom floor, back door. I shall take you out."

"Who said I wanted to go out?" I asked. "What I had in mind is more of an inside activity."

"Ah," said Ean, "but I have one rule."

"Rule?"

"It must be taped or it won't happen. You see me here, lifting boards and painting walls, because I am a sucker for women, such as your ravishing self, that are not fond of being taped or publicized. I don't make money unless it's recorded. I make too many mistakes, fall prey to cruel women's promises, and have no pay. Thus you find me here."

"I'll wear a mask."

There was a rave of humor in his face. "Rosey–"

"And, I'll pay you all you wish," I rushed out. "Make it worth your while. Just.. don't call me that."

"Why ever not?"

_Because that is the name my father gave me and it is not for you to use._

"Makes me feel like I'm three again."

"No, we wouldn't want that. You're most certainly not three." His eyes fell to my figure.

It was my first love affair.

* * *

Ean was no common whore. He did not want pay in the end. I liked to think at the beginning he merely kept coming back because he sensed my need. That was the kind of person he was; warm, sunny, there to make others feel squirmy and happy inside. What I loved most about him was the dusk of a dessert painted across his skin that I felt beneath my fingers more times than I ever cared to count, so different from the Snow family's pale and icy colorings.

Ean was warm, where Snow was cold.

I adored him more and more as our meetings continued from week to week. But I never loved him the way one would think. It was more of a healthy, wholehearted friendship between us. A protective circle to each other's wants and wills and misfortunes. He was ears to listen to me when I spoke. I was his cushion when the night's were empty and meaningless to a man who dedicated his whole life to film and his prick.

The only thing we did not speak of was Coriolanus.

I was still scared, even then. Even with two friends that felt real. Even with a lover.


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

I had my first miscarriage when I was nineteen. This was a year after my marriage, and in those twelve months, I'd had no contact from my husband whatsoever and the thing that hurt the most as blood leaked between my thighs was that _I am losing Ean's baby_. It was unplanned, of course, and horrible for not only myself, but Ean whose whole face paled at the news.

I told him to run that night. I told him to never come back and I would never want to look upon him again. Not, because I blamed him for this unexpected pain and loss, but because I could not hide the evidence. Coriolanus would know. He would murder my best friend, the sunny Ean. I was sure.

That was the last time I saw Ean. In a few years I would ache over that. I would want to break into sobs and double over in my loss of him, the world's loss of a man such as him, because I knew, I _know_, that Coriolanus found him, even after I had flung him so cruelly from my own world. It was all for naught, the cruel words I spat at my lover to get rid of him, and then for him to die hearing those things anyway.

I lost Ean and his baby in the same night. But the pain continued to haunt me for weeks.

I had to visit a physician, I knew. There was too much blood and cramping for a girl such as myself to even wrap her head around. Distraught, I would soak through my clothes, staggering when I walked. Everyone would notice, and I was only a lonely, grieving, frightened child. I had just said a hundred things I did not mean to Ean and I was heartbroken, not only over him, but the baby that I had not honestly known.

Luckily, I knew just which doctor to approach. Mr. Snow had not too long ago suffered pain caused by increased swelling and heat in the joints of his hands, elbows and knees. Many physicians attended him, but there was only one who consistently relieved the president's discomfort. His name was Seawald, and was but some twenty-five years of age. Born to the north of the city, somewhat lower in the social and economical class, Seawald had only recently completed his schooling. Which was why most people envied him, because despite his youth, Seawald combined an assurance, knowledge, and skill that most of the older doctors did not possess. Where they relied on technology, he relied on his brain and his instincts. For that, the youth quickly became a fixture at the president's side.

Unfortunately, he attracted much attention. Which bode unwell for my need for subdue interaction. Seawald was so intriguing to others, not only because of his surprising talent, but he was very dark, bespeaking more toward his black spirit and constant glower, than the flaxen hair on his head. Seawald's right hip and leg had been brutally mangled during his birth, and the newly appointed physician walked only with the greatest difficulty, dragging his deformed leg behind him, and, on his worst days, required a metal cane to stand upright.

Always, I wondered why he never got himself a prosthetic leg. It was the gossip that swarmed about him. Thankfully, the ever outspoken Lara, solved the mystery for me one night over dinner when she said outright that she found it insulting to Seawald's image to be such a magic worker in medicine, but to be so disgustingly disfigured anyway.

"He treasures real flesh," Coriolanus put in coolly over his fork. "I, for one, find the idea refreshing."

"I find it distasteful," said Dorianna. "It scares my daughter."

I did not speak (I never spoke), though I listened, staring at my plate.

I spoke to Seawald, though. I did not trust those other doctors, in my scared and bewildered state. Wide eyed, pale faced, save for the burn of red in my cheeks, I begged him for his aid late in the evening, after I fought my way into his private chambers. Coriolanus was out for the night, as he so often was, and I had a limited amount of time before Damson knew of my disappearance.

Those pale eye of the physician's overlooked me in some sense of amusement. I was a joke to him. It insulted me. I wanted to slap him across the face for thinking to degrade me in my state; only I didn't, I knew I needed his help. In that moment, I never thought to ask him not to speak of my predicament. All the same, Seawald looked me over with that grim glower, and nodded me deeper into his chambers.

As I followed him, in a strange manner I thought the leg endeared him in many ways. Seawald's rasping breath of discomfort, the drag of his leg, the tap of his cane and the constant jingling of the small copper spheres that hung from his neck, announced his imminent arrival more efficiently than any cry of warning; no one could ever accuse the physician of spying, for there was no means by which he could creep unheard upon any conversation. He was a true, solid man, despite his leg.

Seawald's swift, clever hands took mine as he sat me in a chair. There was a grace in the way he handled a person, which he never held himself. Feeling at ease, I moved to remove my dress, frantic to know if something was truly wrong with this miscarriage, but the man shook his head.

"There is nothing I can do," he told me. "I can give you pills to dull the pain, if there is any.."

"Yes," I said. Foolish. The pain was nothing. But to me, it was like being crushed, slowly. "_Yes_."

Though no one could accuse him of spying, Seawald did keep secrets.

He kept mine, at least. It was Damson who told Coriolanus about the miscarriage, the woman who cleaned the blood-stained sheets. I fired her in my hateful fit, when she told him Ean's name and Coriolanus' face stilled in a horrible way I regonized. I would have no friends. Not one.

He liked to take from me, that's what my husband did.

I began to grow paranoid in the weeks after that. I wondered constantly about the miscarriage. Damson had woken me every morning. She knew when my monthly gift came and went and I neglected to count since I was a girl of fourteen. She knew the cycle and I did not and I remember every cup of coffee I took from her, every plate of food, and I wondered if the miscarriage was more than just that of natural causes. It could have as well been her who had taken Ean and my baby from me; I never trusted my staff again, once the thought occurred to me.

Seawald continued to give me pain pills. Morphling, he called it. A miraculous invention made not five years ago, but recently clinically approved. Throughout the day I would be high on this drug, dull, ignoring everything around me. At night I slipped into a bed beside my husband, who continued to turn his back on me.

I dreamed, too.

In my dreams, there was a sun that warmed the sandy shores I walked, and he spoke to me, sung to me; he sounded like Ean most of the time. I had a puppy named Seaweed, whom rumped around in the shallows and came up with tangled green in his yellow fur. He licked my face and I snuggled him, in empty arms, twisting in the cold sheets. Eventually, I asked Coriolanus for a dog. It was at breakfast, I was bleary and just about sober, eyes red and stinging. "Husband," I croaked. I could not remember the last time I spoke in front of his whole family; I shuddered when their eyes raised and turned my way. All frosted blue or pitiless black. Even Dorianna's eldest daughter peered up at me underneath her ringlets and looked surprised.

"My rose?" Coriolanus said, politely, tucking the paper he was reading underneath his plate of eggs.

I poked mine around, breathing deeply. "I was hoping, perhaps I could take on a pet."

"A pet? Such as what?" he asked me.

Dorianna cut in before I could answer. "A pet might make up for the lack of children in your halls."

Coriolanus stared plainly at his sister, cool and unperturbed. "Better none, than the three brats you possess." A pause, wherein her eldest daughter flushed. "Tell me, which ones are really your husband's?"

Dorianna hissed, as if she really were a snake. "Go to your sisters," Dorianna told the girl. Once her daughter was gone, Dorianna leaned across the table, eyes narrowed to Coriolanus. "You will not speak as such in front of my girls, you hear me? They do not need your filth."

Coriolanus turned away from her, to me. He smiled.

I was stunned; I could not remember the last time he had graced me as such.

I had forgotten my husband was still handsome.

"You may get a pet, my rose," Coriolanus told me. "But no cats. I despise cats."

For an instant, I wanted to reach out a hand and squeeze his in my gratitude. Only the action struck me as awkward and inappropriate. We were married, but I could not touch him. He found me displeasing; I found him sickening. Truly, I needed the company a dog could give.

* * *

One year and four months into my marriage, I left the mansion for the first time since settling in with Coriolanus. I'd forgotten how much I loved fresh air. Ean had always tried to take me out, but I would bail in the last moment out of my fear. The day I stepped down the stairs at the back of the mansion and approached my car, I closed my eyes and breathed and wondered over my grief. I was a week sober, thanks to Seawald's insistence and care, and what I really needed to get rid of my shaking hands, was a day well spent shopping for a new pet.

I bought more than I should, or what I needed, but the silks and dresses filled an empty piece of me that I did not know I had. There was money to be spent and so many pretty things in my grasp. I had no where to go in such finery, but after eavesdropping on a pair of ladies within a shop, I realized the annual Hunger Games was coming up. I bought a delicious green dress for the Opening Ceremony; I resolved myself on going to see the tributes on their horse-drawn chariots, and I would see my mother, and I would kiss my husband for the crowds to see and the reporters to take pictures of.

For the first time in my life, I wanted to play the part of Mrs. Snow. I wanted to be the President's daughter-in-law, the Rose that Coriolanus captured me to be, pressed in his pages, imprinted.

People knew me as that woman. They saw me walking down the streets window shopping and came up to me. Introduced themselves and were eager to shake my hand, and pretended to know exactly what I was doing for the months in which I never appeared. Unbeknownst to me, Coriolanus had claimed me ill. Frail and sickly, and then a miscarriage, which was a true tragedy. Poor Mr. Coriolanus and Mrs. Rose, they lost their baby, and he lost his wife to grief. My husband was so well at painting pretty pictures that the public loved to accept and obsess over, even then.

I was recovered by this time; I got to be beautiful and lively again. I slipped easily into the part. It was so much more fun to be Mrs. Snow than to be Rose, who moped around the mansion and felt as though the walls were falling in on her. A depression that once gripped me, turned to an outgoingness, which drove myself away from that which had put me in such a horrible stupor.

Lara was already the party poster-child for the Snow family, and I slipped right into place beside her. I attended all the parties in the months that followed my first outing. I drank and smiled and spoke sweetly to the others, and even the family meals became easier to bear when I learned to lie through my teeth, and to ignore the way the siblings fought over power as if starved dogs ripping their teeth into a piece of fresh meat, warring until the day their father drew a final breath.

I never did get that dog as I planned that day. I went out and found something _different_.

* * *

Over time, Ean and the baby became a distant thing. A forgotten life; as if those events had happened to someone else and I merely knew about them. I knew he was dead, accepted it by then, and watched keenly as the famous and well-liked politicians lost vital pieces of themselves as well. I wondered who was behind these losses; Coriolanus, Dorianna, or Larentia.

At one point in my life, I would have instantly blamed Coriolanus. He was always poisonous. That man in the elevator all those years ago, could not have been his first kill. Coriolanus had been seventeen then, and he was twenty-three by the time I began to notice the convenient disappearances of those who opposed the ambitious brood of children the president's wife had bore. But both daughters were just as likely of guilt.

Lara, by far, was the most innocent of the three. I pitied her for awhile.. because she was horrible at the political game. She spoke too much, was obvious in her intents, and a bit _dim _over all. Her most catastrophic mistake was that she loved her siblings, dearly; she doted after her younger brother and worshiped her older sister. They used her, Coriolanus and Dorianna, and laughed at her behind her back. I pitied her enough to befriend in her the only way I could make a friend; we attended events together, stuck close in the parties, shared drink glasses, and helped the other get home safely.

It was one of these drunken nights in which she needed aid walking that Lara stared up at me, tears in her eyes, and said, "I hate.." She began to cry. "I hate.." and I could not know what she hated, because she broke down right there, in a fit.

To spare her of the morning newspapers, I dragged her outside and into the back of our car. I motioned to the driver just to drive, then separated us from him with a soundproof screen. Lara stained my dress with salt. I awkwardly petted her hair. "It's alright. You're.. just tired," I decided to say.

"No..no.."

"Yes," I said. "We'll get you home and into bed. You'll feel more yourself in the morning."

"No!" Lara said, panicked, and clutched the collar of my dress, pulling her face to mine. "Don't take me home! They can't see me like this.. Coriolanus will never forget.. and Dorianna _hates_ whining. Do you know what she does to her daughters when they cry? She used to pinch them as babies and now she just slaps them. Rose.. I can't go back.." and her tears renewed.

I was speechless, as I always was, when someone implied the awfulness that was my husband and siblings-in-law. I had never seen any Snow cry before. Only me. Their father was a prickly man, and Coriolanus tolerated only perfection, and Dorianna.. well I believed she abused her children, that was true, and I could not think a beautiful woman such as her would ever stoop to the ungraceful sobs that wracked through Lara at that moment. I pulled her close without thinking, because I had sobbed late at night in an empty bed before and dreamed of the arms of a sun holding me, and I never had any.

I wanted to be someone's arms. I could be Lara's.

We found another bar, reintroduced ourselves to drinks, and she confessed things to me that I found monstrous and that made her far more pitiable. "Alex was always the favorite," she sniffed at me, bitter and wistful. "Dorianna hated him.. so much.. and he tried to make it up to her all the time. He was so kind.. I don't think there is anyone like Alexander. Mother loved him best and I don't think Father ever knew it, but she never liked us. Daughters, I mean. Mother called us things.." Lara sighed and clicked her three-inch long nails on the bar table. "But she hated Dorianna more.. she was prettier, even then. Too pretty, my mother thought. _Whore. _That was what she called her, I don't think my mother ever used Dorianna's name."

"Is that why.." I started.

Lara nodded, glumly. "I begged Dorianna to stop once. They're her daughters. I thought I could get her to listen to me, you know?" New and unshed tears arose in Lara's eyes. "I tried to remind her of when we were younger and she said that she would not do what our mother did. She just hits them harder. Then me."

The talk was making me uncomfortable and sick to my stomach, but I continued to listen. Lara needed ears and I had some. "Can't.. can't you just tell the president? He'd take the girls away. Send Dori.."

Lara looked horrified. "Dorianna would kill anyone who tried to take her daughters from her."

"Surely not her father."

"You don't know us at all, Rose. We aren't a normal family. We don't love the same."

I thought of my marriage. "There is no love in your family."

"That's not true." Lara threw back a shot and grasped my hand on the table. "Coriolanus loves you." I laughed until my sides hurt; it didn't take long. She turned over our hands and Lara's finger traced the gray designs I'd gotten imprinted into my skin at the age of ten. My eyes were watching her progression up my forearm and around my wrist. "He does," she said, softly. "Just not normal. We don't love the same. I love him and my sister, and _you_, and my father, and my nieces. All of them. Just not the same way people are supposed to love. Coriolanus loves you and his job. Father and Mother loved Alex. Dorianna loves herself."

"Who do you love?" I dared to ask.

Her smile was thin. "Prostitutes, mostly. People I'm not allowed to love. Victors."

I gripped her hand this time, tightly. "And do they love you?" I thought of Ean, whom I wasn't allowed.

"No." The word was emotionless. "No, I pay them. They hate us."

And that was the first time I took a second look at the Hunger Games and wondered, illegally, that maybe it wasn't good. I had never thought it before. I never cared for the Hunger Games before. I was the Head Gamemaker's daughter and I adored the Games. It was too distant from my life to be felt emotionally and it was a constant event that seemed so.. so.. _there_, and ordinary, and the tributes nothing of significance. I always thought Victors loved us. Lara's words were strange.

"Alexander loved a victor, too, you know," Lara whispered. "Our family always disapproved."

I was used to people adoring the celebrities that were our victors. I never found the taste for buying their physical love as some would. Not to say I should judge those who did, such as Lara. I could understand that these people admired their beauty, their strength, their cunning, maybe even just their status.. but I had never listened to _love_ stories between Capitol citizens and the victors of the districts. There was lust and greed, but not the love Lara implied.

At that point in time, there were only ever thirty-two victors in existence. Not a lot to love.

"That's not something I've seen before," I said, carefully. I tried to picture Alexander in my head; I had seen pictures, and he was not quite so handsome as Coriolanus, but he held the pale skin and dark haired features of a Snow, and had the blue eyes instead of the black. "She must miss him."

Lara drank another shot. "He."

"He loved another man?" It was not a foreign concept. Only a shameful one.

"I thought it was adorable," Lara said. "Alexander thought the world of his broken victor. He was from District Eight. A miraculous victor, really. No one ever wins in that district."

I knew the statistics. I'd gotten the Hunger Games bet log. I had memorized all the victors by name. "You mean Alexander loved Rayne Mox? That shabby man from the Eleventh Hunger Games?"

"The very one."

That was enough secrets for me on one night.

We slept in an apartment six streets away from the mansion. It was Lara's secret place, a haven. A place she welcomed me into without grudge. In the morning, she woke with a nasty hangover. I took her to Seawald and he cured the headache and boiling stomach fast enough so that we could attend the family breakfast. If the other siblings noticed anything different between the two of us, it was not made known, nor acknowledged.

I could not stop staring at the bruise on the side of Dorianna's daughter face.

"Rose," Coriolanus said when I made to rise and excuse myself.

I sat down heavily, turning to him, attentive. "Husband."

"Don't be so formal, call me Coriolanus." He smiled, leaned forward and examined me closely. "I got you a present. It is waiting in our chambers." That cold hand of his, that had not touched me since the Opening Ceremony in front of hundreds, touched my fingers and slipped beneath my palm and curled tight. "Close your eyes, I shall guide you."

I heard the unrestrained giggle of Dorianna's daughter, and the scuff of her mother. But it was Lara's small loving smile, almost smug in a way, that tugged at me. I closed my eyes. "Okay."

Coriolanus led me through the halls, gliding. I felt my heart in my throat; this was so strange. To put myself into my husband's trust, for him to give me this attention, for his hand to clench around mine and steady me when I stumbled. I would be lying if I didn't entertain horrible, appalling thoughts of what awaited me in the bed chambers. Would there be Ean's corpse? A mistress of his own? A threat? A beating? Kisses..?

I craved kisses suddenly, over anything else. His kisses. Coriolanus' touch and attention. I was swept after him by his soft hands and I wanted to wrap my arms around my husband and call him mine and be his ears, too. To hear his own appalled horror at what his family is, such as Lara had done. I thought him capable of that. I made him out in my head as that for those few minutes; another victim in the family, struggling to keep up, hating every moment of it.

Turns out that I was wrong, once more. I was stupid to think of Coriolanus in that way. He only hated those who put him down, those who sought to belittle him and, those who broke his perfect image. Underneath his icy, professional exterior he was a horribly self-conscious man, I would come to know. That was why he could not bear to lay with me at night, to let his brother's shadow overcome him, or his sisters. No one would make Coriolanus feel bad about himself; but it happened, and when it did, he would make sure he got his revenge for it, even if the person who committed such an act was unbeknownst of their crimes.

He got me a puppy. It bounced onto my legs and lapped my ankles and snuffed my dress. I gasped and looked to Coriolanus, in all his smugness. "I got her just for you. She's very smart, trained well. And quite beautiful, no?"

Shaggy, blonde, and round eyed. "Yes," I agreed, scooping her up. "I'll name her.." I paused, suddenly worried. I held my breath and considered my husband. "Unless you want to.."

"No. She is yours to name."

"Flower, then," I said. The puppy yipped and licked my face. I closed my eyes momentarily, to feel my husband's hand on my shoulder, caressing, soft. But brief and gone within the heartbeat.

"A good name, albeit unoriginal, but good anyway." Coriolanus was watching me, closely, and his posture spoke both of discomfort and unease. "Are you happy, my rose?" he asked, voice soft.

"I had not thought it relevant," I said, remembering the manner of our engagement. Me, crying and begging, and him, ignoring my pleas and pushing the ring onto my finger. I would never forget.

His face hardened. "Isn't. I only wondered." A pang of regret as he turned from me. "Goodnight."

"Wait. You will not sleep here?"

"Best not. Larentia's company is surely one you would prefer. She will come, I am sure." He left.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six

Lara never came. I slept that night with Flower tucked in my arms and her drool staining the collar of my dress. I went to Seawald the next morn. There I sat, watching him move around his chambers, tidying his medical supplies. Flower chased after him and tried to gnaw his gimp leg. I called her off but the puppy blinked at me, ignored me, and went on romping around Seawald's chambers, chewing and shedding hair. "I thought he said it was trained," I sighed, tugging at my hair.

"Trained to listen to him, probably," Seawald commented.

"Like me," I said.

Seawald sent me a glance. "Stop being bitter."

"Me?" I said. "You're the bitter one here."

"No, I'm the disabled one. You're the bitter wife."

"Well," I said, at loss for a reply. "I'm the pretty one."

"Which makes me the smart one," he said, with a ghost of a smile.

Seawald never smiled. That one glimpse elated me. I leaned forward and continued the game. "I'm the social one."

"I'm the trustworthy one."

"I'm the fashionable one," I said, twisting my skirts to flaunt their spiel of color.

Then, he laughed outright. I grinned; it pleased me to see him that way. "You are certainly that."

"How so? You sound so certain. You've thought this before? Of my fashion?" I made it out as scandalous, grinning slyly, eyes flashing and cocking my head to my shoulder. "You notice my dress?"

"Do not look so surprised," Seawald said, rearranging a box of supplies. He threw me a look over his shoulder; both sharp and rolling and unimpressed in one. "You dress in a way that keens to be noticed. Very.. form-fitting."

"Why, Seawald, you notice my form?"

Those eyes. He turned and they darkened and I forgot to breathe. "You're a very beautiful woman."

I had him right there, right then. In an awkward coupling, in a chair, me astride him, avoiding his defaulted leg. It was rough, and quick, and full of grappling hands in my hair and on my breasts, his mouth hot on my neck. Afterward, Seawald tugged on his pants and led me to another chamber, pressing a cup of tea into my hands that assured nothing bad would result from this affair, such as the last.

But that's what it became. An affair. My second affair in my marriage. Not so warm as the first, nor accompanied by friendship. Just a sex-centered affair that happened in sharp, sudden bursts in random chambers about the mansion. Much like that, Seawald would be. Sudden flares of affection for me, then he would be his normal scowling self. Dark and brooding, while I moped around him.

I didn't mind it. In some ways, I liked him more than Ean. He was less obvious in his affair. No servants or Avoxes ever happened upon us, and no one would suspect the physician of such an act. Even if we were found out, I was sure of Seawald's safety from Coriolanus' anger, because Seawald was a favorite to Mr. Snow and he would never allow the physician to die. The only living thing which had ever witnessed our love making was Flower, who made nothing of it, and that caused both of us to laugh over once; because_ only if the pup could speak_, then it would certainly tell Coriolanus.

Did I love Seawald? Did he ever love me? To that, I would have said no. Not truly. He loved my face, my body, my laughter, the sound of my voice, and the pleasure of knowing that I did not recoil from his misshapen leg and hip. I loved his precious few smiles, his miraculous knowledge of healing, and the way he treated the Snow's with distant disdain, while still being paid for his service to them.

I never told Lara about him, nor Ean. But she certainly told me of her own victor lovers. Near all of the men, and half the women, have been paid to be within Lara's company. She favored the victor from District 2, named Garnet Grantson. A strapping young man, three years younger than her, orange eyed, all bicep and jaw. While she guttered about Garnet's finesse and prowess, I thought of Seawald's awkward embraces in bed, the kisses that were sloppy and not sparked, the slow way our hips rolled together, then apart. No two men could be more different – then I would remember my husband.

I think that was what compelled me to roll toward Seawald, abruptly, afterward a session of lovemaking. I had never spoke of Coriolanus to Ean, but Seawald was different. He knew more than Ean ever did. So when I said, "Did you know my husband never touches me? Never has. Has not kissed me since our wedding and we spoke vows of love?" I felt winded once they were out, to a point of regretting every word.

Seawald's expression was carefully cool. "I did not know." His hand raised and brushed hair from the sweat sticking it to the side of my neck, kisses the edge of my chin. "That is.. relieving."

"Relieving?" I whispered.

A smile, I felt, on the skin beneath my ear. "It is _nice, _to know. I will no longer be disgusted whenever I think of that man's pale, blood-stained hands gliding all over your body."

"You think about that?"

"Why do you think I cannot stand being in his company?" Seawald pulled back to look me in the eyes; I felt my stomach wither. "I do not like the thought of another man touching you."

My fingers graced the blonde stubble on his rather weak jaw. I thought of Lara, of her impossible love, the ones she could not have. I felt my heart shatter for Seawald. "But I am not yours," I whispered.

I saw the sting in his eyes. I had thought he'd known; that he understood that it was not love, that he knew I did not think, nor expect his committed affection (did not think him capable). "You could be," he said, the words twisting into the lining of my throat, choking me.

"How?" I breathed, and felt the urge to cry. "I am Coriolanus'. Always. Forever."

Seawald gripped me by both wrists and held me there, in a desperate sort of clutch. His eyes were certain, though, sure and intelligent and dark in that way that held me in place, still, holding my breath. I recalled how he was there to comfort me in my anguish, the man whom had given me pain killers when I was suffering, the man whom made sure I was waned off of such drugs when I threatened to be addicted. I did cry. The tears burned down my cheeks and I buried my face into his neck. "I cannot be yours," I told him. "Coriolanus will never let me go. He said so. I am his. _His rose_. I shall never be free. I shall never have you, my love, nor you me."

Seawald... Seawald.. I never got over him, I don't think. Not the way I did for Ean.

He loved me, in a different way. I loved him, too, eventually. But I never allowed myself to accept it, not truly. I knew all along I was Coriolanus' and would never be anyone else's rose. Seawald was not strong enough to face my husband, and I would never allow him to try, I could not live with the thought or possibility.

After that night of tears and truth, slowly, our affair died away. We met less. Every time I saw him my tears would renew and he grew tired of comforting me. His scowl became so deep, his words so sharp to my husband and the family, that he was dismissed from his service, despite his great knowledge and healing hands. I never saw him again. Yet, I still remember those dark eyes, that rare smile, and the endearment that consumed my heart whenever I saw him.

Painful, still.

* * *

When I turned twenty, during the celebration Larentia had put together in my honor, I met _The_ Victor again. It would be the first time I saw him since my wedding – though I am sure he saw me plenty of times since that date, unbeknownst to me. At my birthday, that time, I noticed.

He gave me a gift. Not the usual gifts to my taste, either. Not nice silks or glimmer jewels, such as Coriolanus gave me. _Better_. Flower had growled and snapped at Grier the whole time the man stood in my orbit, staring at me with those impossibly flinty eyes. I smiled, as befit someone in political circles, and Grier merely took my hand and kissed it chastely.

His hands were surprisingly warm, sweaty. I felt a flush rise in my face as Lara hollered at my side – even she had not conquered this victor's time with her money – and cameras flashed, assuring me that Coriolanus would see this on the next day's paper. I didn't care.

The smile ached across my face, and Grier merely stared on coldly.

"Miss," he said to me, one word, bobbing his head.

He left immediately after that, and I wanted to see him again.

I wanted another affair. I wanted to forget Seawald and indulge myself into Lara's sweet pain.

"I must have him," I told her that night in _our_ apartment haven. I pulled her to the coach and straddled her lap and begged my sister-in-law. "Oh, please. Buy him and put him in this place and let me come to him in private. For me, sister. My birthday."

Lara laughed and sighed for me, all in one. Her head shook. "Grier cannot be bought."

"Every victor can be bought!"

"Not this one, Rose." Lara gripped my shoulders, twisted us, and pinned me beneath her amongst the cushions. Her smile cut. "I can get you Garnet, though. He is ever eager for someone new in our bed." The back of her knuckles soothed the mass of my hair next to my face. "Come tonight," she sung.

I laughed, heartily, and I touched my cheek to her flushed ones. "You are drunk."

"And you are very attractive," Lara said.

Her knee pushed apart my legs and her knuckles glided down the waist, to caress a thigh. I sucked in a breath, tried not to twist closer or even away, and laughed further. "Larentia," I said, a bit sharply, shaking myself mentally, thinking of Coriolanus. "This will not happen."

"Why ever not? You are always wanting affection and attention." Her lips dragged across my jaw.

_Yes, but not from a Snow. _"Men," I said, muffled. "Only men."

Lara pushed herself up on her hands, to either side of my face and tilted her chin, considerately. Her hair tickled the side of my face, her warm breath clouding between us. "You really want this Grier, then?"

"Yes," I breathed. One of my hands clutched her by the shirt. "Please."

Lara's smile was small, but loving. "I shall try."

She moved to roll off of me, but I caught her wrist, and forced her to meet my gaze; there was no resentment, nothing that bespoke offense. She understood. She was not feeling rejected. "Why are you so nice?" I asked, then, stupidly. "You do this for me. You always rush forward to please Coriolanus. To agree to Dorianna and uphold anything she orders. Why do you allow it?"

Again, that small loving smile. "Because I know how to love where the rest of my family does not."

Underneath, I heard the admittance; _not even you._

It was true. I didn't know what love was, and did not know how to participate in it.

* * *

Two years into my marriage, I found myself having my third affair. This one was not so wonderful as the first two, nor as long-lasting. It happened maybe twice, with my driver. His name would come to fade in my memory, so much so, I would not be able to recall it even five years later. It ended a week after the week it began. Lara found it hilarious.

"You are so desperate," she said.

I knew it. I knew it and I pretended to scuff. "I merely enjoy sex."

Outright laughter. "You'd enjoy sex with Grier, that's for sure."

I flushed. "Stop."

"What? Teasing you about your little crush? Never."

"It's not a crush," I said.

Lara sat up from where she lounged, clutching her heart and fluttered her eyelashes in a poor imitation of me. "Oh, Lara, _please_. I must have him. Get him for me. I want him so _bad_! I need him!"

I threw the nearest thing; Flower's gem-encrusted collar. Lara easily dodged. "That's not how I sound."

"Is to."

"Is not."

"Is to."

"Is _not_." I pulled my legs onto the coach and curled them underneath me, Flower snuggling in the space there, and I stared sadly down at her floppy ears. "Women like me don't have silly girlish crushes."

"And what does that mean? 'Women like me'? What kind of woman are you?"

I thought of Ean; he would have called me a beautiful one. Seawald would have called me a bitter one. Coriolanus would have merely called me _his_ woman. I could not know what the driver thought of me, for I had rarely spoken a word with him. "I guess I meant at my status. With being a wife and Coriolanus could never.. would never.."

"Coriolanus would never hurt you, you know that?" Lara said.

"He's already hurt me."

That jolted through Lara like a blow. "What? He's hit you? But he's not–"

"No, I didn't meant that. I mean.." I sighed, because I tried to conjure up any point in time when Coriolanus hurt me, and I found two distinctive memories. One, the wedding and engagement. Two, Ean and the baby. "He's trapped me."

"He is scared of losing you." Lara was sympathetic for her brother. It unnerved and angered me, but I made well to hide this. "If you were he, with such a beautiful wife, wouldn't you fear to lose her to another?"

"No."

She flopped back against the pillows. "Fine, don't try to see it his way."

"It's not as if he tries to see from mine!" I said, stung into indignation. "He never even looks at me. When I'm around, I feel insignificant, invisible. He looks over and around me, never meets my eyes, rarely speaks. The last we shared a bed was six months ago, for one night. He crept in while I pretended to sleep and he lay with a yard between us. A whole, entire _yard_! Then left in the morning without so much as glancing at my face. If he had, he would have found me smiling, and he would have found me willing to try. To make things pleasant. I want to be happy, don't you see that? I want to forgive him his wrongs and hear his words as I do yours, but he will not allow it."

Lara thought me wrong. "He loves you. I know he does."

"He has not shown liking or even desire for me since before we were married. When I was sixteen or so. The night of our wedding, you know what he said to me?"

"What?"

"'I find you most displeasing.' And then he turned his back to me and has not once turned back since."

"Have you ever thought that you were the one to turn first? Maybe you should be the one turning to him," and with that Lara pushed herself up from the coach and slammed the door after herself when she left. I stared dumbly after her; unable to understand.

_Oh, if only I had._


End file.
